About

Golden Sky Stories is a heartwarming, non-violent tabletop role-playing game from Japan. In 2013, we had a highly successful Kickstarter to fund the publication of an English version of the rulebook. But there’s more to discover in Hitotsuna Town.

They come out at night. The mononoke, creatures of pure Wonder. The michinoke who lurk on roads, the strong oni, the aquatic kappa, the spooky ghosts, and the fleeting visitors. As strange as they might look, they too are residents of the town, seeking friendship and hope.

Golden Sky Stories: Twilight Tales (originally released in Japan as Mononoke Koyake) is the first Japanese supplement for Golden Sky Stories, and it adds the mononoke as a new set of character types for players and narrators alike. Each has a signature character, but they’re also easy to reskin to be any number of creatures. The rules for the kappa also let you play other aquatic creatures like mermaids, and where the signature visitor is an alien, your visitor could be a time traveler, a winter fairy, or even Santa Claus. The book will also feature an intro comic and scenarios to help you get started using mononoke in your stories.

We expect the English version to weigh in at around 70 pages, and in addition to the “Otoshidama’s Adventure” and “A Ghost’s Errands” scenarios, it will include two original scenarios by T.S. Luikart: “Present Thunder” and “Big Dog’s Day.”

Big Dog's Day (art by Honoel A. Ibardolaza)

Our secondary goal for this Kickstarter is to fund a second printing of the core rulebook. It’s taken a while, but thanks to Indie Press Revolution we’re close to selling through our first printing, meaning the print version alone has reached close to 3,000 people. If we're not able to amass the funding for the full print run of the core book, we will still be able to fulfill any extra copies via Print On Demand if need be.

If you don’t have the Golden Sky Stories core rulebook yet, don’t worry! Pick a pledge level with the PDF Library to get PDFs of the core book and all three original English supplements (it’s a great deal!), or one of the levels that includes the GSS book if you’d like a physical copy of the core rulebook.

If you'd like to get a feel for the game before you pledge, have a look at these:

Preorders are now available through BackerKit!If for whatever reason you're unable to use Kickstarter or simply would prefer not to, you can now put it preorders, which will ship at the same time as backer rewards. Backers will also be able to add physical copies of Maid RPG or any of our Golden Sky Stories books as add-on items once surveys go out.

Twilight Tales PDF: Get the book in PDF form.

Twilight Tales Book: Get a printed book delivered to you.

PDF Library: This is a bundle of the PDF versions of the previous GSS books: the core rulebook, The Colors of the Sky, Faerie Skies, and Fantasy Friends.

Golden Sky Stories is the core rulebook, with all the info you need to play any of the six basic types of henge, example NPCs, two introductory scenarios, and a sample town.

The Colors of the Sky collects bonus material from the original GSS Kickstarter: five new playable character types (mouse, wolf, pony, and fish henge, plus the witch), two scenarios, Allen Varney's Henge Candies essay, and two prose short stories.

Faerie Skies is an original setting, which moves the game to rural England, where you can play one of six types of fae. It adds new NPCs, story seeds, and the sample town of Westwick.

Fantasy Friends is another original setting, which takes place in a village in a fantasy world. It has six new character types based on different kinds of fantasy monsters, 36 magic items, NPCs, story seeds, and the sample town of Grassdale.

Wall Scroll: Get a colorful wall scroll of Golden Sky Stories art. You can choose from two designs: the design from the wall scroll from the Golden Sky Stories Kickstarter (depicting the spider and centipede goddesses), or the Kappa and Oni's Excellent Adventure design we commissioned for some reason.

Custom Character Type or Scenario: For backers at the $600 Narrator level, we'll make a custom character type or scenario to their specifications (within the limits of good taste and legality of course). This will be available as a PDF to all backers, and incorporated into collections of GSS bonus material. Leave your mark on Golden Sky Stories, and do something cool for your fellow fans!

If we go over our base goal, we'll be producing some new Golden Sky Stories material that'll go out to all backers in PDF form!

Base Goal: $6,000 (UNLOCKED): It’s happening! We’ll be able to print and ship Twilight Tales to backers and get it out into the world!

$7,000: Kappa and Oni's Excellent Adventure (UNLOCKED): T.S. Luikart returns to GSS with an original scenario inspired by the wall scroll art! The kappa and oni will indeed have an excellent adventure!

$8,000: Tsukumogami (UNLOCKED): This character type is a new kind of mononoke, a man-made tool that has taken on a life of its own and become a magical creature.

$10,000: Land of Illusions (UNLOCKED): It so happens that for the Japanese version of Golden Sky Stories there is, of all things, a doujinshi book for the Touhou games. While we can’t publish the full book, if we reach this stretch goal we’ll do an English version of the character options from the book, which include new Miko and Fairy character types, as well as a library of Powers and Weaknesses you can use to customize your characters.

$11,000: Witch’s Cat (UNLOCKED): Inspired by the Witch Quest RPG released in Japan in 1991, this is an alternate cat character type that is a witch’s companion. You can play one alongside a witch PC (as featured in The Colors of the Sky) or with a witch NPC, and they have some nifty magical powers that make them a bit different from a normal cat henge.

$12,000: Story Seeds (UNLOCKED): A collection of paragraph-long story ideas that you can easily spin into a full scenario.

$13,000: Western Fox (UNLOCKED): Where the fox henge in the core rulebook are based on the fox spirits of Japanese folklore, this is an alternate fox that’s more in line with Western folk tales, good for games set outside of Japan, or if you just want a different take on foxes.

$15,000: Raspberry Sky Stories (UNLOCKED): We’ll make a Golden Sky Stories version of Ewen’s card-based schoolgirl slice of life RPG Raspberry Heaven, with character cards for the six signature henge and a set of 12 scene cards for stories around Hitotsuna Town. Backers will receive a PDF and a code for ordering the cards at-cost from DriveThruRPG.

$16,000: Raucous Night At The Tanemura Estate (UNLOCKED): In the late summer, when the last traces of dusk have fled the sky, spirits gather in the crumbling old house on the edge of town. They come together to play Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai, a game of ghost stories where each storyteller snuffs a candle when their tale is done, inviting more spirits to appear. Of course, these new spirits are quick to join in the festivities, leading to a night of supernatural merriment for all in this Golden Sky Stories scenario from Richard Kelly.

$17,000: Raccoon Henge (UNLOCKED): Outsiders from beyond Hitotsuna Town, raccoon henge love to solve problems using their creativity and big city know-how. A new character type by Rach Shelkey.

$18,000: Deck of Dreams (UNLOCKED): This will be a 54-card deck of cards you can use as Dream tokens, with appropriately colorful GSS-themed designs. It will be available to backers as an add-on item, and then put up for sale on DriveThruRPG as a POD product.

$20,000: The Colors of the Sky POD Book (UNLOCKED): If we hit this stretch goal, we’ll put together a “The Colors of the Sky” Print on Demand book, compiling all of the stretch goal material from both Kickstarters, plus some new art, and provide discount codes to all backers.

$21,000: Magical Girl: Regulars of the town by day, magical girls walk out into the wild and wonderful world of henge and mononoke as avatars of Wonder at night to help bridge the two worlds-so long as they can still get their work done by morning! A new character type by Sean K.I.W. Steele.

Golden Sky Stories is currently available to retailers through Indie Press Revolution, and the game and its supplements will continue to be available there in the future. If you'd like to get Twilight Tales or other GSS books from us directly, you can pledge at the General Store level. This will be a down-payment towards whatever Golden Sky Stories books you order at a wholesale price; feel free to contact us for pricing.

Star Line Publishing is an independent RPG publisher founded in 2012 by translator/designer Ewen Cluney and editor Mike Stevens, with the goal of bringing both translated Japanese games and original ones to the English-speaking world.

In 2013 we launched Golden Sky Stories via a highly successful Kickstarter campaign that led to producing three new supplements for it, and in 2014 we took over publishing Maid: The Role-Playing Game as well.

Risks and challenges

Especially after making it through the original Golden Sky Stories Kickstarter, which succeeded beyond our wildest dreams, we’re pretty confident we can make this one happen. The layout for the book is already done apart from some minor tweaks, and we have contacts figured out for printing and fulfillment. The major challenge for us will simply be to get things done in as timely a fashion as we’d like, especially if we hit all of our stretch goals. Luckily, we learned from last time not to let the physical shipping be dependent on too many other things, so you should get your actual books fairly quickly, followed by a series of PDFs with bonus material.